Human Comedy, Volume 8

Author: (French) Balzac / Multiple Authors
Publisher:
Publication Date: 1997-03-01
Features: Honoré Balzac (1799–1850) was one of the greatest novelists of the 19th century, a master of creating typical characters, and a universally recognized master of realism. Through 20 years of dedicated work, he created the miracle of the novel in the history of literature with La Comédie Humaine. He united over 90 novels of varying lengths into a complete and all-encompassing social portrait, providing an "excellent realism of French society, especially of its upper class,"① transforming novels, once seen as mere entertainment, into works of documentary value. Balzac's entire oeuvre demonstrates his original and innovative practice and development of realist literary theory, greatly enriching and perfecting the art of the novel, ultimately elevating it beyond the realm of "story" to become a highly expressive and entirely new form of art. Balzac lived during the historical turning point in France's transition from a feudal to a capitalist society, personally experiencing major historical phases such as the Napoleonic Empire, the Bourbon Restoration, and the July Monarchy, as well as significant events like the revolutions of 1830 and 1848. The complex contradictions and rapid, sustained social upheavals of this period brought unprecedented vitality to social thought, fostering the prosperity and development of 19th-century French literature and exerting a decisive influence on Balzac's creative work. All great writers reflect their time in their works, but Balzac's aspiration was to fully recreate his era. He was not content with depicting a mere social aspect oring a few typical characters but sought to complete "a series of works on 19th-century France," where "each chapter is a novel, and each novel represents an era." He brought thousands of characters to life on the page, forming a complete society and vividly recreating the history from the French Revolution to 1848, when the bourgeoisie fully gained dominance. As he himself put it, this was "a customs history that many historians overlooked." Balzac boldly broke through traditional artistic boundaries and methods, almost infinitely expanding the subject matter of literature, allowing everything in social life that seemed alien to literary poetics to intrude into the novel: financial and monetary affairs, debt litigation, bank insolvencies, and store inventory settlements were all poetically depicted in his works; characters from all trades and social strata could be found in La Comédie Humaine. Thus, it was said, without exaggeration: "The more complex society is, the more complex the content of La Comédie Humaine; the richer life is, the richer its scenes." Moreover, Balzac attempted to further explore the causes of these social phenomena, analyzing their essence and significance. Early in his life, Balzac possessed a strong desire to grasp everything, understand everything, and explain everything. Before deciding to become a novelist, he aspired to be a philosopher; when he chose to reflect contemporary history through fiction, he first thought of studying human society as Buffon studied the animal kingdom. For Balzac, writing was a means of researching and explaining the world. Therefore, beginning in 1830, he published his novels under titles such as "Private Life Scenes," "Philosophical Studies," and "Customs Studies." In 1841, inspired by Dante's La Divina Commedia (literally The Comedy of God), he decided to title his works collectively La Comédie Humaine, metaphorically likening all the struggles and joys of human existence to theatrical performances on a stage. In the La Comédie Humaine that began publication in 1842, Balzac divided the works into three parts: "Customs Studies," "Philosophical Studies," and "Analytical Studies." According to his own explanation, "Customs Studies" depicted the contemporary social customs of France; "Philosophical Studies" explored the causes of these social phenomena, seeking the hidden meanings within the multitude of characters, passions, and events; and "Analytical Studies" analyzed the essence and roots of these causal relationships from the perspective of "the natural laws of humanity." Among these three parts, "Customs Studies" was the most extensive and significant. Based on the categories of subject matter, Balzac further divided it into six scenes: "Private Life," "Provincial Life," "Parisian Life," "Political Life," "Military Life," and "Rural Life." Balzac originally planned to write over 140 novels under the general title of La Comédie Humaine, but he completed only 96, most of which belonged to "Customs Studies" and were primarily concentrated in the first three scenes. These 96 novels were not all masterpieces, but as a whole, they formed a magnificent and grand structure. In the history of French and European literature, no second such monumental structure exists. The protagonist of Le Père Goriot, Rapha?l, once said, "I feel that I have a certain idea to express, a certain system to establish, and a certain doctrine to elucidate." This was precisely Balzac's state of mind as he wrote La Comédie Humaine. To achieve the height he aspired to, he voraciously read countless philosophical, social, and scientific works from ancient and modern times, constantly comparing, analyzing, and synthesizing them; he delved into every corner of social life, uncovering people's innermost secrets, observing the political and economic structures, the distribution of power and wealth, the mysteries of law, and the efficacy of religion with the meticulousness of a philosopher and scientist, dissecting people's emotions, desires, and the motivations behind their actions, patiently exploring the internal connections of various social phenomena. In this turbulent and restless society, he discovered an uncontrolled law of nature: the rising dominance of the bourgeoisie and the decline and dissolution of the aristocracy. Such a historical trend was the essential force governing all social life at the time. All conflicts, struggles, upheavals, and crimes in society, as well as the tragedies and comedies in family and personal lives, were closely tied to this specific historical process. Thanks to this comprehensive understanding of society, Balzac was able to grasp the essential historical content from the scattered, individual, and phenomena, successfully depicting the profound changes in social life and the profound impact on people's destinies and souls during France's transition from a feudal to a capitalist society. Thus, Balzac's works surpassed those of his contemporaries not only in breadth but also in depth, earning him high praise from Marx and Engels. Balzac's superiority over ordinary writers lay in his being a writer with both a philosopher's mind and a historian's perspective. His works transcended personal experiences and emotions, incorporating a comprehensive analysis of society. In his novel La Dernière Chasse, Balzac wrote, "The highest art is to incorporate ideas into images," and "a single word should contain countless thoughts, and a single scene should summarize an entire philosophy." Thus, he elevated the novel to the level of historical philosophy, achieving a depth that general literary works could not match. As a customs historian, Balzac was more powerful than genuine historians because he did not rely on concepts but appealed to images. Everything that historians explained with concepts, he guided readers to feel through numerous typical characters and events. Therefore, the history he depicted with images often left a more profound and compelling impression than the history written by historians, making it more persuasive. Engels once said that from La Comédie Humaine, he learned "even more about economic details (such as the redistribution of movable and immovable property after the revolution) than from all the professional historians, economists, and statisticians of the time combined." Creating images and the typical characters in typical environments were Balzac's primary means of summarizing and refining life, and also his main contribution to realist art. By combining character development with profound historical content, he established the most magnificent gallery of characters in the history of French literature. Balzac allowed his characters to reveal their personalities through action, making the plot and setting descriptions skillfully serve the shaping of character. The characters in Balzac's works, even minor ones, were all vividly individualized and lifelike, though somewhat exaggerated, yet firmly grounded in reality, making them feel utterly convincing and lifelike. Belyayev once marveled at the fact that none of the numerous characters in Balzac's novels were entirely identical. Zola admiringly remarked that in the face of Balzac's vivid and realistic characters, "the figures of ancient Greece and Rome seemed pale and trembling, and the medieval figures lay prostrate like toy lead soldiers." Balzac possessed the sharp insight of an artistic master, able to quickly delve into people's inner lives and capture their essential characteristics through brief encounters. This extraordinary artistic talent was fully developed due to his rich life experiences. Born into a family that had risen from peasantry to the bourgeoisie, with relatives who were mostly middle- and lower-class old-style merchants, he became familiar with this class from a young age. After becoming a writer, he was accepted by the "upper class," giving him more opportunities to study the customs and traditions of the nobility. During his time studying law at university, he worked as a trainee in a law firm and notary office, gaining insight into the sordid side of Parisian society. More importantly, during the ten years before he gained fame, he engaged in various trades, experienced countless struggles and failures, endured the pains of business, bankruptcy, closures, liquidations, and debts, and suffered the harassment of bill collectors and the exploitation of usurers. Among his contemporaries, no one had a more direct and profound experience of the torment of money and the rule of materialism. In terms of accumulated life experiences, none were as rich as he. He was, as he himself described some of the geniuses he portrayed, "a man who had lived, struggled, and felt in the hell of Paris." He was not only the author of La Comédie Humaine but also an actor on this grand stage. Baudelaire called him one of the "most peculiar, interesting, and romantic, as well as the most poetic"① characters in La Comédie Humaine. What he depicted in La Comédie Humaine was not only his observations but also his experiences and feelings, and it was precisely these personal experiences and feelings that the most chapters of the work. Imagination is an indispensable quality for an artist, and it was one of Balzac's strongest talents. He was not only an exceptionally clear-eyed observer but also possessed a passionate and rich imagination. The ideas he formed through observation and reflection were quickly transformed into a variety of characters. These people acted according to the logic of life in the writer's mind, seemingly not under his subjective control. Balzac often lived in a world of hallucinations, constantly interacting with the characters he had created, to the point where theymed his sleep and appetite. He and his characters fantasized, suffered, and struggled, sometimes confusing the fictional world with real life. He would eagerly report news about these fictional characters to his friends, as if they truly lived among them. It was said that when he was ill, he called the name of the famous physician Bienvenu in La Comédie Humaine, claiming that only this doctor could relieve his suffering. This extraordinary mental state was a manifestation of the artist's overstrong function of imaginative thinking. The reason why the characters in Balzac's works often appeared more vivid, realistic, and convincing than real people was largely due to his exceptionally strong imagination. Balzac lived in the bizarre society of 19th-century Paris, exposed to a variety of and doctrines, making his own thoughts extremely complex. His mind was filled with conflicting claims and doctrines, and in his works, a wealth of profound insights coexisted with absurdities, sharp analyses with ridiculous conclusions. He believed in the materiality of the world but was deeply attracted to mystical doctrines; he was essentially an atheist but fervently promoted religion; his blueprint for social development did not transcend the framework of capitalist free competition, yet he leaned politically toward the legitimist party. But what mattered most was that as a writer, Balzac always considered it his duty to deeply understand and faithfully represent the objective world. The statement, "French society is the historian, and I should only be its secretary,"① both humble and proud, accurately reflects Balzac's attitude toward realist creation. Although Balzac lived in an era when Romanticism swept across France, although he himself was a highly romantic figure who often lived in a world of fantasy, and although his works contained many romantic chapters, no matter how romantic or even absurd his expressive methods were, he always remained rooted in the soil of real life, focusing on reflecting the essence of reality. Therefore, Plekhanov said that Balzac was a "realist in the deepest sense of the word." Starting from his rich life experiences, Balzac achieved a clear understanding of the essence of contemporary society and the trends of historical development. He respected history and life, even when the logic of life led him to conclusions contrary to his own beliefs and wishes. Thus, as Engels pointed out, although his great works were "an endless elegy for the inevitable collapse of the upper class,"② when he made the nobility act, "his satire was unprecedentedly sharp, his irony unprecedentedly biting, and the characters he often openly admired were precisely his political adversaries."③ Engels summarized this as "one of the greatest victories of realism"④. It was precisely for this reason that Balzac, the legitimist who claimed to write under the "eternal truths" of "royalty" and "religion," unexpectedly found his works confirming some of the scientific conclusions of Marxism. Balzac has become a figure for Chinese readers, and this is the?book_contents=Customs Studies · Provincial Life Scene[III] Parisians in the Provinces Famous Gaudissart The Poet of the Provinces An Old Maid in an Antiquarian Shop Preface